Malta places first in European Engineering Heat

Donald Dalli, a student of the University of Malta’s Faculty of Engineering, placed first in the European Speak Out for Engineering competition.

Donald presented part of his Ph.D. project that contributes to the MaltaHip project which is funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology through Fusion: The R&I Technology Development Programme 2016 (R&I-2015023T). MCL Components Ltd is the leading industrial partner collaborating in this project.

The MaltaHip project is led by the Department of Anatomy (Faculty of Medicine and Surgery) but involves the interdisciplinary interactions between the departments and faculties, namely the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, the Department of Mechanical Engineering (Faculty of Engineering) and the Department of Trauma and Orthopaedics (Mater Dei Hospital). The project is also being supported by other Engineering Departments including the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, the Department of Industrial Electrical Power Conversion and the Department of Systems and Control Engineering.

The main aim of the project is to develop a novel hip implant, which the MaltaHip team is aiming to patent in the near future. For this purpose, a physical hip joint simulator to test the novel design was developed. However, in order not to disclose any details about the implant itself, Donald based his presentation on this simulator. The presented hip joint simulator does not only simulate walking, as opposed to traditional hip joint simulators, but can also be used as a testbed to test newly designed implants for other activities of daily living to mimic better real-life conditions.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) is a worldwide professional engineering body, which organises the Speak Out for Engineering competition every year. The purpose of this competition is to encourage young engineers to present their work in order to promote themselves, as well as to develop their presentation skills.

The Malta Heat for the SOFE competition was held on 5 October, while the European Heat was held on 17 November in Seville, Spain at the Cristina Heeren Foundation.

In the European Heat, Malta, Germany, Spain and Palestine competed. Malta placed first while Germany was the runner-up. The International Final is to be held next year.